Up the VIP seats of Libreville’s Amitie stadium, Roger Milla and Samuel Eto’o were gripped, on the edge of their seats.
Milla, spearhead and hero of Cameroonian football when the country first announced its capacity to punch above its weight, won two Africa Cups of Nations in the 1980s. Eto’o was his natural successor, champion of his continent as spearhead of another generation of Indomitable Lions in the early 2000s.
What price another Milla – now 64 – or Eto’o, 35, to rescue the apparent decline of Cameroon 15 years on? That is what most folk were asking in the lead-up to the 2017 Cup of Nations.
The current Lions looked like cowed pussy cats when the tournament began in Gabon a little more than three weeks ago. Their manes had been trimmed. Eight senior players controversially turned down call ups to the squad.
The comeback from that atmosphere of mistrust and rancour, from the gloomy predictions of humiliation, was completed close to the end of a gripping final on Sunday night, a comeback from 1-0 down against Egypt sealed by Vincent Aboubakar’s goal less than two minutes from full time, via a piece of dexterous control and a cool finish of which Milla and Eto’o would have been proud.
As an upset of the odds, this triumph – a fifth Nations Cup title for Cameroon – might not quite rank with the Milla-inspired march to the quarter-finals of the 1990s World Cup, or the Eto’o-energised Olympic gold medal of 2000. But it surprised almost everybody who made a forecast, as well, presumably, as the eight – among them Liverpool’s Joel Matip and Schalke’s Eric Choupo-Moting – who thought this a campaign so ill-starred that they would prefer to spend the month in service with their European clubs.
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Also from Afcon:
■ Cameroon hail 'magician' Broos
■ Cameroon's victory – in pictures
■ Ian Hawkey on his team of tournament
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The refuseniks created a headache for manager Hugo Broos, a season Belgian globetrotter – he had a brief spell in the UAE as an assistant at Al Jazira – with, evidently, better man-management talents that the stayaways were ready to trust.
Broos was obliged to back the potential of young players such as Fabrice Ondoa, the goalkeeper whose techniques are not always conventional but whose instincts are sharp, even if Ondoa might have felt he did not do justice to his high standards of the rest of the tournament when he allowed Mohamed Elneny’s shot to fly past his outstretched left hand an inside his near post in the final.
Broos backed the speed and bumptious confidence of Christian Bassogog, a 21-year-old winger who 18 months ago was playing to limited audiences for the Wilmington Hammerheads, in North Carolina, United States, where the level of competition is strictly lower division.
Bassogog, named Player of the Tournament by the Nations Cup organisers, will return to a day job at Aalborg, in Denmark, having far outshone the likes of Riyad Mahrez, of disappointing Algeria, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, of early-exit hosts Gabon.
This Cameroon, unsung, were well led by Benjamin Moukandjo, who set up the equaliser against Egypt, scored by Nicolas Nkoulou.
Broos had by then developed not only a Plan A, but Plans B and C. Cameroon could contain effectively, when put under pressure, but they could also express themselves in attack.
They had looked horribly short-staffed when they arrived in Gabon. By the end, they had an enviable bench. Two substitutes scored the goals in the final and Nkoulou and Aboubakar, experienced players with Uefa Champions League knowhow, were apparently happy to accept their roles outside the starting XI.
“I don’t have 23 players with me here,” a delighted Broos said. “I have 23 friends.”
He has been praising the spirit of his Lions ever since they edged out Senegal in the quarter-finals. He had a little word, too, after he had clutched the trophy, for those who had failed to board the train.
“We had some trouble with the players who would not come with us, and that is their decision,” he said. “But maybe now they are thinking: ‘Why didn’t we?’”.
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